American Law’s Worst Moment—2020

AUSTIN SARAT

Austin Sarat—Associate Provost and Associate Dean of the Faculty and William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence & Political Science at Amherst College—explains why the police murder of George Floyd was the worst moment of 2020 in American law. Professor Sarat proposes that we remember the event and that date—May 25—as “infamous,” a word reserved for rare and atrocious events like the bombing of Pearl Harbor, in an attempt to capture the brutality and inhumanity of the act.

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Hurd v. Henley

Docket: S-17104

Opinion Date: December 31, 2020

Judge: Joel H. Bolger

Areas of Law: Real Estate & Property Law

Shay Hurd appealed the superior court’s determination that his adjoining neighbor, Larry Henley, adversely possessed a portion of his land. Hurd and Henley shared a boundary line that Henley first encroached on by building a shed and then by building a larger shop. Hurd sued, and the superior court ultimately awarded the area originally occupied by Henley’s shed and the area surrounding it to Henley, but not the larger area with the shop. After review of the superior court record, the Alaska Supreme Court concluded the superior court did not err when it found that Henley regularly graveled and parked vehicles in the area granted to him as adversely possessed. "Henley’s activities on that area were sufficient to constitute adverse possession. The superior court adequately defined the area adversely possessed by referencing landmarks with locations readily ascertainable from the record." The Court interpreted the “good faith but mistaken belief” required for adverse possession by AS 09.45.052(a) to require only subjective good faith; therefore, the superior court did not clearly err by determining Henley occupied the former shed area due to a good-faith belief the land was his.